Introducing Reverse Sales

You may have heard murmurings of the indiepocalypse, how the price of your average indie game is quickly approaching zero as desperate developers race to run bargain bin sales or join pay what you want bundles that net 2 cents per sale.

Are creators proud to list their game at 75% off after months/years/decades of development? In some cases, just weeks after a launch. Maybe when sales were novel, when the amount of units sold recouped for the reduced price. Sadly it seems selling your game for pennies on the dollar is just one of the many stages of a release you’ll trudge through as you try to make your game known among the thousands of sales and hundreds of bundles going on at any given time.

Can we solve this? I don’t know. But I do know that itch.io can make it easier for you to collect more money.

When you’re creating a sale you’re typically doing two things:

Giving people a deal.

Creating a new moment in the life of your project for someone to talk about, an attempt at reaching a greater audience.

We think the second point is valuable. We’re surrounded by countless industries pushing to drive down prices, often at the expense of creators. It’s easy to get caught up in the first bullet point without really thinking about the second.

A sale is a celebration of your work. Why not celebrate by letting people pay their respects to your hard work by giving you more?.

Will this feature really fix anything? Probably not, but we think it’s cool and fun so happy April Fools*.

Go forth and host some sales, but don’t feel obligated to always lower the price :).